Early History of the Vaishnava Faith and Movement in Bengal, from Sanskrit and Bengali Sources c5.s3.7

c5.s3.7

¹ Identified by some with the Buddhist Vāgīśvarī or Vajreśvarī. Cf. *Caitanya-bhāgavata*, Ādi ii, where the cults of Manasā, Vāśuli etc. are mentioned. For an account of these popular cults from literary sources, see Asutosh Bhattacharya, *Maṅgala-kāvyer Itihāsa*, Calcutta 1940.—The Dharma cult, as Haraprasad Sastri has now amply demonstrated, with its doctrine of void (*śūnya-vāda*), came out of decadent Buddhism.